Genesis Mining Frequented Asked Mining Questions

Who is Genesis Mining?

Genesis Mining is an easy and safe way to purchase hashpower without having to deal with complex hardware and software setup. We are a team of mining experts with thorough knowledge of the digital currency sector. Genesis Mining specializes in building the most efficient and reliable mining rigs that can be rented. Plus, we have experts for cooling and maintaining data centers.

How does genesis cloud mining work?

It is quick and very easy! As soon as we receive your payment your contract will be added and you can immediately start mining. Either mine purely Bitcoin or distribute your hashpower on other coins (also partial allocations like 60% LTC, 20% BTC and 20% DOGE are possible). After the end of the day, you will get your first payout within 24 hours and from then on each following day.

Therefore, it can take up to 48 hours to get your first payment (mining period of 24 hours + up to 24 hours for the payout). After that it should take about 24 hours for each payments, but please note that this can vary from day to day. Please see the section “When do I get my payout?” for more details.

If it is profitable, then why are you not cloud mining yourself?
Besides the fact that we ourselves mine with the very same hardware that we offer to our clients, our capital is limited. We believe that Bitcoin and altcoin mining is highly profitable, however, we do not want to “put all our eggs in one basket”.

Where is your crytocoin mining farm located?
For security reasons, we do not disclose the exact location of our mining farms. As of June 2014, we are operating three coin farms that are located in Europe, America and Asia. Electricity and availability of cooling are important, but not the only,criteria.

What coins can I mine?

You are able to mine Bitcoin and additional various altcoins. As of December 2014, we now provide the following coins:

A special feature is the “Genesis Mining Advanced Autotrader”: it allows you to mine BTC by mining scrypt based altcoins! This is possible by automatically mining the most profitable scrypt coins which are then automatically exchanged by our algorithmic trading framework to BTC. This is a very cost efficient way of mining Bitcoin. We call it “mining BTC the smart way”.

The same technique is also used to mine DRK with scrypt, or to mine LTC with a sha256 contract.

What is my expected return on crytocurrency investment?

Bitcoin and altcoin mining depends highly on the prices and difficulties of the coins you mine. It would not “look right” if we provide data on the mining profitability and selling contracts at the same time. Therefore, we recommend all our clients to do their own research and do their own profitability calculation.

For example, you might want to have a look at coinwarz.com.

Please note that the website is an independent source of reference and not related to Genesis Mining in any way.

What does “100% uptime guarantee” mining mean?
It is always possible that a miner crashes, slows down or completely breaks. In all these cases our algorithms ensure that other miners are allocated to the relevant pools to fully compensate for the hashpower loss. This way our clients will not lose a second of mining time.

Which pools are you using for mining?

We do not publish a list of pools we are using. Our main criteria for a good pool are: reliability, fee structure and reject rate. Going forward we will solo-mine a few coins (and pass the fee savings to our users!).

Our internal policy is: “be a good crypto citizen”. This means, that we will at least use two different pools (in some cases we use up to four) for each coin. This is to preserve the decentralized nature of the crypto networks! If we become aware that a pool is getting close to 50% share, we will switch away from it and use a backup instead.

On the first glance one might think that buying miner X is slightly cheaper than hosted mining. However, there are a number of “hidden” costs related to purchasing and maintaining a miner that change the economics significantly:

shipping costs: few merchants will cover this, but in most cases they will charge you extra
customs dues / VAT: if it is an international delivery you will likely have to pay customs dues and VAT; generally this has a huge impact on the total cost of your mining equipment
delivery time: when you pay for your device you have to wait until the miner is packaged and shipped; if it is held up in the customs this can take weeks. And during that time you cannot mine at all (“opportunity costs”). You have to wait and hope. And if the merchant has a stock shortage; it is you who has to wait. With Genesis Mining you pay and get your hashpower immediately online. No delays!
costs for additional equipment: when buying miners from larger retailers you often have to buy additional equipment like an extra PSU that matches the electricity specs for your country, control units and specific shelves to store them efficiently. This adds up significantly to the overall price for hashpower
setting the system up: when the device finally arrived you have to assemble and configure it. Beginners often underestimate the amount of work and technical knowledge that is needed to bring the device up and optimize its settings. People that used the first ASICs spend days and weeks on it. In monetary terms this costs you twice: (i) your time and (ii) lost mining opportunity
maintenance: hardware failures, outages and crashes could lead to downtimes between seconds and weeks. If your unit breaks you have to return it and start from scratch (by the way: check the guarantee time of your miner; it is often less than a year). With Genesis Mining you have a guaranteed uptime of 100%: in case one of your units fails another unit will be switched over and start mining for you the very same second
electricity: having the machines at home not only brings heat and noise, but also an increase of your electricity bill; an important factor that many underestimate

Please do not get us wrong: we do not want to discourage anyone from mining at home! We are often asked about prices and realized that many users do not know about all the hidden costs. If you compare the true costs (and do not by chance own a fusion plant with free electricity and cooling from the Antarctic), you will notice that our prices are very competitive. We want to provide you the best possible mining experience, so that you can focus on mining your favorite coins (and we take care of the rest).

What is the genesis mining maintenance fee?
The maintenance fee covers all costs related to mining including, inter-alia:

electricity cost
cooling
maintenance work
hosting services

It is calculated per MH/s scrypt or per GH/s sha256 and automatically deducted on a daily basis. For the current maintenance fee, please check contract details.

What does lifetime mining contract mean?
Lifetime contracts do not have a maturity date. As long as the contract is profitable (i.e. the payout covers the maintenance fee) you will continue to mine and be able to receive payouts. Theoretically, this could be 100 years, however practically it will depend on difficulty and market prices for the crypto currencies.

How can I mine different coins at the same time?
Genesis Mining allows its clients to mine different types of coins at the same time. You decide which coins you prefer and you can allocate hashpower accordingly.
By default all hashpower is allocated to the Genesis Mining Advanced Auto-Trader (in short “Auto”). This means you will receive your payouts in Bitcoin only. If you are interested in mining different types of coins, you can do this as well. In the user interface go to “Mining Allocation” and choose the hashpower allocation that is best for you. When you are done press “save”.

In order to get the payout, please ensure to add your payout address in your wallet settings (please see below).

How do I set my payout addresses?
In the menu “My Account” select “Wallets”. Here you can set payout addresses for each type of coin. The links in “blue” will help you to find a suitable wallet for your coin of choice.

When do I get my payout?

Genesis Mining provides daily payouts of all mined coins!

A mining day usually starts at 00:00 UTC and ends at 23:59:59 UTC. If you just bought a contract the start time could be different and you will only mine for a fraction of that day. Otherwise your miners will mine for you 24 hours and exactly act according to your settings (see “mining allocation”).

At the end of the mining day we will do some additional calculations and double-checking to ensure everything is correct. About 8 hours later (max. 24 hours) you will receive payouts for each coin you have mined. Please ensure that you provide a payout address for each coin you mine, otherwise we cannot make the payout!

If you just bought your first contract it could potentially take up to 48 hours until you receive your first payment. If you did not get anything from us within 48 hours please contact our support team at contact@genesis-mining.com.

When you order via credit card, your payouts will be held for a month, as stated in the Terms also. Unfortunately we need that to protect ourselves from credit card charge back. Once the month has passed, the full amount will be released to your wallet, and from then on you will receive a daily payout. In the mean time you can see your earnings accumulate via My Account > My Orders, under “My pending balance of credit card payments”

You can check your payouts also in the menu under “Payouts”.

What is a multipool? How does the Genesis Mining Multipool work?
Mining on a “normal” pool means that the miner will exactly mine that one coin (and nothing else)..

A multipool on the other hand will switch between different coins, depending on their profitability. In practice the algorithm will check the coin difficulty and the market prices to determine the most profitable coin. Then all miners are redirected accordingly..

First generation multipools were directly paying the different coins and it was up to the user to exchange them to Bitcoin.
Second generation multipools act like first generation pools, but automatically trade the various coins for Bitcoin.
Third generation multipools are highly optimized second generation multipools, that mine the most profitable portfolio of altcoins (instead of the most profitable coin). This requires deep knowledge about the mining process, switching costs and makes use of advanced portfolio theory (also with respect to correlation patterns among different coins).

In simple terms: if coin X is the “most profitable one”, then adding more and more hashpower to it, will make it less and less profitable (i.e., the marginal utility of mining the coin declines). In order to achieve the best possible result, it is necessary to use modern portfolio theory (and various optimization techniques) to mine the most profitable portfolio of coins.

Furthermore, our platform uses an advanced trading engines that allows to trade the mined coins efficiently to any target currency (like Bitcoin). There is a lot of work and brain capacity going into the algorithmic trading engine to make it the best of its class..

The following slide gives a good overview:.

In step (a) the client’s mining hashpower is distributed by the control unit (CU) to various altcoins by using advanced portfolio optimization techniques to mine the most profitable portfolio of altcoins at any time!.

After the coins have been mined the Genesis Mining Trading Engine (b) exchanges the altcoins to bitcoin for the best possible prices..

In this way you can sit back, relax and earn Bitcoin while the algorithms are doing all the number crunching to maximize your profit! Have fun!.

Where can I learn more about you?

We have visited several conferences and there is a number of articles about us. Please find a selection below: